


Let There Be Light

by deskclutter



Category: Discworld - Pratchett, The Sandman
Genre: Community: 31_days, Crossover, Dysfunctional Family, Family, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:36:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the beginning, perhaps there was Morpheus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let There Be Light

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to say that this may not quite gel with (either) canon, but er. Yeah, it probably doesn't quite mesh with the Sandman timeline. Also: halfway to crack.
> 
> For [](http://faded-lilac.livejournal.com/profile)[**faded_lilac**](http://faded-lilac.livejournal.com/), because I owe her birthday fic and have misplaced the wizard!fic that I promised her.

**Title:** Let There Be Light  
**Day/Theme:** February 27th / What shall I do to shun the snares of death?  
**Series:** Discworld/Sandman crossover  
**Character/Pairing:** ensemble  
**Rating:** G

  
_In the beginning, there was Kaos._

Omnian translators often draw attention to the first four words of the most recent version of their holy text as the fourth word is 'Om', and indicates therefore that the beginning was Om and Om the beginning*. It has remained standard practice for other religions to claim the significant number to be a vastly different one, from one (Tak) to fifteen (Blind Io) to six hundred and seventy-eight (Offler the crocodile god, who has always been slow on the uptake).

As this sentence was derived from a rare translation of a now-obliterated Omnian text, however, the Omnian equation shall hence suffice. Therefore, we shall reproduce the key portion of the text as:  
__

_In the beginning, there_

By doing so, one thus separates the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, for though the sentence ostensibly speaks of Kaos, or Chaos, the word 'there' indicates a position, and if a 'there' exists, so must a 'here', and with those two words is an approximation of distance and thus an order within the Kaos.

The author humbly cautions, however, that the reader not take up their opinion with the entity known as Kaos, for if so done, he will withdraw his services posthaste, and the most exquisite dairy produce in the history of the Discworld will be forever beyond reach. Dear reader, do not make the author's mistake. Though if you do, write me so that I may have some miserable semblance of comfort amidst my overweening sorrow.

  
In the beginning, there was Kaos. Now, Kaos created more Kaos, rather like a machine for-the-replication-of-physically-and-mentally-alike-to-the-original-being-that-was-submitted-for-replication☮. But in the course of replication, there was a course, and so Time was born, and from time came _measure_. Soon after followed poky fingers in place where they quite possibly should not have poked, which brought further division in Kaos, of space from twinkly rocks and twinklier bright things that went BANG if poked again...

Things sparked too, with the colour that today the wizards call 'octarine'.

  
By the shores of the distant skerries, a pale hand picked out a clay shape. "What is it?" a voice asked the hand.

"A beginning," said the hand's owner as he kneaded the clay.

  
Now the Omnians tell the story differently, and their story begins with:  
__

_In the beginning, Om created the wicked and the unwicked, and then Om smote the wicked, and He called it Good._

But no one believes that version of the Omnian tale, because it devolves into a spiel about the wickedness of Om's smiting of the wicked because it made the unwicked wicked, and _that_ is clearly wicked.

Besides, the lightning bolt hadn't been created yet, then.

  
"I heard a story the other day," said a spectator. "It was a story with no ending, one that sort of swims off into forever through spittle and speech. Drawn through the generations by tellings and re-tellings. I liked it."

"It served its purpose," said the hand's owner.

"You make it sound so final. Finished."

A head peeps free of the clay. "It ended."

  
The lightning bolt is a tricky one to place. Ronnie Soak claims it came into being long ago, but the gods know it did not because they would have used it then, before humans began worshipping sheep and cows, which meant the gods had to take on the semblance of sheep and cows with all the disgusting foibles that came with being sheep and cows...

Io claims recognition for the lightning bolt's discovery. Being the god(s) of thunder, he has an advantage over the many, many other gods who clamour for the distinction.  
A blasphemous (and destroyed-by-a-smiting) text claimed that the first wizards had discovered it by chance, which is evidently nonsense, as that would accord the Lady responsibility for the thing. As one of the very few denizens of Cori Celesti who did not own the slightest interest in lightning bolt politics, it was patently obvious that she could not have dun it. The lightning bolt's inventor would most definitely have joined the debate, and the Lady had not. That was that.

Witches, who know somewhat about magic and how women's minds work, would say otherwise. Or perhaps they would not, for witches do not engage in pointless arguments with the gods☾.

  
A little finger traced pinpricks of a colour unknown to earth into the air. The forefinger and thumb remained at their work. A clay coloured eye blinked at the sudden, firefly brightness.

Curious eyes peered at the constellation of faces encircling the clay shape. "What about these?"

"They are beginnings. Endings. Beliefs."

"Can I touch them?"

"They are not my beliefs." A fingernail pierced fractal outlines into the clay.

"Hey, this one has your eyes."

The hand stilled, for one subtle moment. "They are not my beliefs," said the owner of the pale hand.

"He still has your eyes. What's his name?"

"Do you not see it for yourself?"

"That takes all the fun out of asking. _You_ know. Spoilsport."

  
But of course the witches are not the only women around. There is Time.

It was never any use asking Time about lightning. There is a story that says the true reason Time destroys the world and remakes it every second of every minute is so that lightning will scramble and never find her again.

It is of course, an untrue story, in no small wise because Time does not actually shatter and rebuild reality. _That_ theory was thought up to appease the overly curious.  
The truth is that the history monks enjoy peeling mad theories from a magic hat to trick the gullible. Everyone who knows the history monks knows that.

  
A rumble rolled out overhead. The curious eyes looked up. "Am I disturbing you? If you need me to leave, you could say so, like a normal person. It would go something like, 'My sister, I am a busy and testy being--'"

A messy head raised from its concentration. Starlit eyes blinked once in confusion. "You are no distraction."

"Then why are you raining?"

The fathomless eyes turned skywards. "It is the Dreaming that rains. _I_ do not rain."

"Sure you do, deep down in your tattered soul."

"...Do you wish to leave."

"Tell me what's wrong, little brother."

  
They say the first history monk was raised by the yeti. They found him squalling in the woods and took him in. They taught him to slice and save his time, and he taught them to lie.

When he returned home as a man grown, with his face both soft and strong as only a young man's is, his younger brother threw his walking stick at the boy who ran away.

"You promised you were never coming back!" he ground out through teethless gums.

"I lied," said his brother cheerfully. "But I am going away now." False teeth took a fatal clip from his head, but fortunately the monk was _very_ good at saving his time.

Of course, the history monks decry the yeti's story; it was the first yeti who learnt from them.

  
"His name is Fate."

"Fate?" his sister said, surprised. "But he has _your_ \-- ah."

"They are not my beliefs," he reminded her. "I am only a shaper, not a maker. I cannot--"

"Dream." Her hands found their way to her hips. "It's okay for us to ...cha -- to not be the same. To not be the same over there. That's _there_, and this is _here_. There's a measure to that, an order. Can you see it?"

"Do you by 'order' designate organisation or direction?" he murmured in retort, but the rain clouds died away. "...My sister..."

"You can thank me by giving me a pony."

He slanted her a patent Look.

"That was a joke, Dream." He handed her a loaf of bread from his unmuddied hand, and she couldn't help but laugh.

"So where's my namesake? Does it have the cowl and skeleton routine going?"

  
In the lore of the land of Uberwald, where Time first fell afoul of lightning and the history monks fell afoul of too many bloody castles argh argh, the beginning was good to the hunt and the wild. The beginning was bad to the V-E-T people, mostly because the wild hunted all people in general.

The middling parts, though, now these are uncertain times, what with the wild crisscrossing of the many, many lines in the werewolf section of Almanack de Gothic, but the pack holds firm.

There is no ending in sight yet, no matter what the foolish fools of bloodsucking fools say.

  
"Are you done?"

"Yes." The clay shape passed from one pale hand to hers. "It is your turn."

Surprise flittered between the lashes of her eyes. "Me?"

"I trust I need not explain to you your function, my sister?" her brother inquired politely.

"Don't be cheeky," she warned. "Here, breathe." She held her hand up to him. He bent over, and a warm wind rushed over the clammy form in the palm of her hand.

She stroked the wet head gently. "Good morning," she smiled. "Welcome to your life."

The clay eyes and beak regarded her gravely, but then it broke into a smile, as best as it knew how.

"It is morning, right?" she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.

"Indeed."

Slowly, colour tinged the clay sculpture around flesh and land and sea, and as rainbow shades soaked in, it began to feel less like clay and more like weighty, fluttering leather. When the last of the indigo fell into place, the octarine fireflies flickered a fraction brighter before they began to swarm towards the little being on her hand like bees around their queen. They ranged around the little mountain peak and gushed in as the final shade of the spectrum, the octarine colour of magic. All save one.

HELLO, it said.

She couldn't help herself; she stared. "You did _not_," she informed her brother.

"They are not my beliefs," he said again. A marginal twitch arrested his lip, but he was Dream and so it was definitely not the hint of a smile, or a laugh, or any form of humour.

I SHALL TAKE IT FROM HERE, said the cowled skeleton. I HAVE AN ADEQUATE GRASP OF THE PHYSICS \-- OR LACK THEREOF, I THINK. A blue flash lit up in one eye socket, like a wink, but that might just have been the reflection from his deadly sharp scythe. Then he walked into the flat map as the last octarine firefly prick.

"This is the end of your part," her brother said then. "The remainder of the story--"

"Goes on forever?"

"Perhaps." He bent down to look into beetle-bright eyes. "You know that which you seek. Go."

The eyes nodded, and then turtle moved up, up into the free air. Her leathery limbs grazed his sister's palm as the space creature took off. She turned back after a few shuffling sweeps of her flippers, in blunt farewell, then she flew out into the distant skerries.

"Be seeing you, A'tuin!" Death called, waving a hand that still bore the faint impression of clammy-cold clay.

Dream did not correct her.

  
A rumour passes through the underworld of 'others' -- the one who live on the edge of human-ness and, well, other-ness. Time's son and Death's granddaughter are getting married. But that is not the rumour.

In Biers, the rumour is hushed and quiet because Miss Susan owns the Poker, and sometimes comes by to be herself: The Pale Horse♇ is to be the bridesmaid. "Grandfather insisted," Miss Susan allegedly said. "Since Albert _will not_ be catering and Grandfather _only_ be walking me down the aisle, and _definitely not_ singing." IT WOULD NOT BE PROPER TO HAVE OUR FAMILY UNDERREPRESENTED, "he said. When I find out who gave him the book on human wedding customs, there _will_ be consequences..."  
The rumour trails ominously off there☠.

  
Dream did not lecture her on proper conduct or glare mutinously at her after she visited herself (himself?) on the Discworld.

When she returned, she went past Fiddler's Green and up the long, long stairs (with a little detour to greet Lucien), and into one of his ever-shifting rooms, and she asked, "Did you ever answer my question about my namesake?"

"I do not believe so," he said absently. His newest project was a puzzle of raggedly-patch stained glass dreams.

"Are you going to?" She sat down on a convenient chair that told her he did not want her gone, and she propped her elbows on the table, and she put her chin on her hands as though she had all the time in the world.

"Did you not sightsee during your journey?" he asked, placing a moonshine tinted piece of blue next to a gold glass portrait of a misshapen bicycle in miniature. "I was given to understand that touristry on the Discworld is the Next Big Thing."

"Are you going to?" she repeated.

He looked up then, to catch the steely twinkle in her eye, like something that could possibly go BANG...

"Perhaps," Dream replied.

  
Cities have souls. That's what he thinks when attacked by wild flights of fancy. On odder days, he wonders what the human picture of his city looks like.

This is what she _is_: She is stench, and has dark secrets lurking around her terrible corners. Her sense of humour is the sophist's equivalent of pulling the fat kid's trousers down. She harbours the snivelly, the stupid, the shadowed. She starts off from the lowest common denominator and wades her way into everyone's affairs with the subtlety of a large, muddy splash. And when people come to take her walls, she opens her gates and lets them in until they become _hers_.

In his mind, curious as it seems, he sees laughing eyes and he hears the sound of a woeful or a wise Morepork bird on her shoulder. Over her heart is the Ankh half of his city's name, a solid silver river☥.

The daydream breaks when Carrot walks in with a new pile of things to sign, or, on sadly few occasions, something that calls for the scuff of cardboard over cobblestones. Vimes doesn't share the thought with anyone else.

  
At Ankh Morpork's Unseen University, a riddle plays out when tutors can be coerced into actually teaching the students: which came first, the Roundworld or the Disc?

One misinformed lad striving to get ahead of his students performed the Rite of AshK Ente to demand Death's answer. He called instead a representative of the Roundworld, who, unfortunately for the boy, happened to be female☯.

The argument that blossomed from this incident was a satisfyingly long one that lasted until the dinner bell, when all arguments at Unseen University are temporarily misplaced.

The woman had left long ago, but the wizards, if they missed her smile and the beauty of her eyes, did not miss her answer.

They already knew it, after all, for it was a magical accident in their very own university that had created the Roundworld. The joy of the argument is the joy of _being right_.  
The girl from the Roundworld giggles as she bids A'tuin goodbye. What is it that Dream would say? All stories are but shadows and half-truths; all stories are but figments of reality.

* * *

  
Footnotes:  
*Other religions have long given up the battle for equal creatorial mandate (a head priest of Io remarking that religious leaders were "not, after all, _wizards_"), though history depicts fracas of a frightfully violent strain, most involving steel, celestial interference, and, on one memorable occasion, pie.  


☮Originally conceived by Leonard da Quirm.  


☾They prefer to keep such arguments within their ranks.  


♇Also known as Binky, who is not a pony.  


☠Another rumour holds that the history monk Lu Tse was last seen headed for Ephebe. It is, of course, an unrelated rumour.  


☥Almost exactly like the actual river, if one removes the silver out of it.  


☯Fortunately, the Librarian was at hand to terrify him out of his shock before he died of it. Unfortunately, yet again, the Librarian was only inclined to frighten him because of several overdue books...


End file.
